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“Space Science is Data Science: Brahe, Battin and Others…”
April 4, 2024 @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
A brief history of space science and the inextricable interconnections between our understanding of space mechanics and observational data is discussed. This lecture talks about how Kepler’s laws, the most elegant and parsimonious explanation of orbital motion laid foundations to most of the modern data science techniques. Newton, Euler and Lagrange developed a variety of approaches to pose and solve problems in space mechanics. From Gauss’ pioneering contributions that created what we now study as linear algebra and probability theory to modern approaches that are quantifying uncertainty of space objects including debris, we will journey through a selected set of topics in orbital mechanics that have largely contributed to modern data analytics. The lecture will culminate with a discussion on how gravity is modeled and how computations of gravity field of irregular objects continue to be an interesting problem to understand our planet and to navigate our way to the moon (and beyond).
Manoranjan Majji is an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and is the Director of the Land, Air and Space Robotics (LASR) Laboratory at Texas A&M University. He has a diverse background in several aspects of dynamics and control of aerospace vehicles with expertise spanning the whole spectrum of modeling, analysis, computations and experiments. In the areas of state estimation, astrodynamics, tensegrity systems, vision navigation, and system identification, he has made fundamental contributions documented in over 190 publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE, an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a fellow of the American Astronautical Society (AAS).
Location: Blocker 220 & Zoom
For Zoom Link, please register here!